Inspiring Journeys: Gloria Macias Harrison’s Legacy & Community Hope in San Bernardino

In this encore episode of the Making Hope Happen Radio Show from 2022, host Erin Brinker sits down with Gloria Macias Harrison, renowned educator, community leader, and former president of Crafton Hills College. Gloria shares her remarkable story of growing up in San Bernardino, her pioneering work in education and community journalism, and her insights on language, culture, and leadership. The conversation explores the value of bilingual education, the importance of resilience, and the power of community engagement. This episode is a celebration of perseverance, community, and the transformative impact of hope.

Transcript

Erin Brinker: 0:00

Erin, welcome everyone. I'm Erin Brinker, and this is the making hope happen radio show. So glad to have you with me on this beautiful it blistering summer day. Super excited to bring to you an encore presentation of an interview that I did with Gloria Macias Harrison back in 2022 she has a storied career. Has had a storied career in education in the Inland Empire, and I don't want to take anything away from the interview. You're going to hear it from her. Let's go. I am honored to be sitting down with Gloria Macias Harrison, she is the chairperson for the San Bernardino community college district, and she was elected to the Board of Trustees in 2012 Macias Harrison has balanced two careers plus family and community activism since the early 60s. She is one of the founders of El Chicano, which is a weekly newspaper that grew to be, I think there are nine different community weeklies, including the Inland Empire community news and, of course, el Chicano, that are published weekly trustee. Macias Harrison served as president of Crafton Hills college for 12 years and as Vice President of Instruction for six she taught for 20 years at San Bernardino Valley College, and was Dean of Humanities for three she retired in 2011 was elected to the San Bernardino Community College Board of Trustees. In 2012 she was a governor's appointee on the California Commission on the Status of Women, and served on the council, sorry, California Council for the Humanities, and numerous state committees on education, in addition to serving for the past two and a half years on the city's charter committee, she's a member of Kiwanis and is on the board of the valley concert Association, the brown legacy, Crafton Hills Foundation, San Bernardino College Foundation, and is currently a member of the League of Women Voters, the American Association of University Women and the Rialto business and professional women. She serves on several, several advisory committees, including the San Bernardino City Schools making hope happen Foundation, and is treasurer of the San Bernardino County School Board Association as past president for the Inland Empire Community Foundation. She is active on the foundations youth grant makers program, and she is the recipient of numerous awards, a graduate of San Bernardino High School and San Bernardino Valley College, and finally, the University of California Riverside, where she earned a bachelor's and a master's degree. It is such an honor. GLORIA Macias Harrison, welcome to the show.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 2:36

Thank you so much, Erin, and I appreciate by the way, there are some corrections to all of that bio. Oh,

Erin Brinker: 2:45

so, all right, so

Gloria Macias Harrison: 2:48

that bio is an old one. I have to send you a new one, but I'm no longer the chair. Stephanie Houston. Dr, Stephanie Houston, my term ended at the end of 22 and Stephanie still, Houston is now the Chair of the Board of Trustees, and there's some other corrections, but that's okay. I have done all those things, so that's okay.

Erin Brinker: 3:11

So, so tell us about your, you know, your San Bernardino experience, your life experience, you know, tell us who are you?

Gloria Macias Harrison: 3:19

I'm just a West Side girl. I grew up on the west side of San Bernardino and went to all the local schools. I think I started at Harding Elementary, which is no longer exists. It's, it was where the fell Heim are, close to where the falheim library is now, and and so I vaguely remember, because we lived at that time, there was no freeway, and we lived a few blocks away from the railroad crossing, and so I had to walk to my grandfather would walk me to kindergarten. And I remember very vividly that my father was called in and was told that I had to speak English, otherwise they could not keep me in my kindergarten class. Now it wasn't because we didn't know it, because we did, but my grand, my sister and my sister, Martha Macias Brown and I were not reared by our birth parents. And so my grandmother and my uncle was, they were our guardians. And so we lived on K Street, not too far from between seventh and sixth and the west side of San Bernardino. And so my dad was in radio at the time. He was, I call him my dad. Okay, that's my guardian. He was one of the early pioneers of Spanish language radio in San Bernardino, and he had a radio show called La ora de lobar. And so he spoke English to us all the time. And of course, we were one of the first families to have a TV in our household. So I learned English. Quite frankly, from cup of Fran and Ollie and Cecil and beanie and all of those. Oh, you're taking us back. Holy duty, howdy duty, all of that. But we didn't speak it at home because my grandmother could not speak English. So my dad said, decreed, okay, I'll speak to you in English, and Grandma will speak to you in Spanish. So that's the way we grew up. And I was able to stay in my kindergarten class. After that, I attended Ramona Alessandro Franklin, which is now Martin Luther King, and then San Bernardino High School. And I have to say that I had, you know, people always have this image of the West Side schools, that they were inferior that we had some darn good teachers. And I have to say that it was, yes, it was it was challenging at times, not because of the language, but because our schools. We it was a sort of a cultural shock when I went to San Bernardino High School, because the rest of you know Ramona and Alessandra and Franklin, we knew everybody. I knew everybody. And so we knew the families. We saw them at church. So we knew everybody. Franklin, we got a little bit more mixture, because at that time, we had students coming from north of baseline and Highland and so there was, there was a good mix, there of students, diverse students, and so. And of course, so we walked to school. You know, we knew the neighborhood. We all stopped at Ernie little grocery store gonna

Erin Brinker: 6:43

buy some candy on the way home from school? Yeah,

Gloria Macias Harrison: 6:45

you know, buy candy or buy something or no sodas, but candy, we didn't have enough money for the soda, but in any way. So that's where we grew up, and we had some really marvelous teachers, mostly because and I think my sister and I were fortunate in the sense that my dad really was a reader. And so I mentioned this to somebody just recently that on Sundays, it was a great day because we could read them. My dad read the newspaper every day, so we had a newspaper in the house. And on Sundays, when the he would divide the paper and we would get the comics, because the comics, the comics were, at that time, you almost four pages, yep, of a standard, you know, paper. And so, you know, we read Nancy and we read we had Terry and the Pirates. We had Dick Tracy and all of those things. You know that we Dagwood and all of those that and we, we, we, we read them. And then my dad, even though we didn't have much money and we were not, believe me, we're not a wealthy family, he bought us individual books, and I remember treasuring my book. One was a pop up because my dad really liked pop up books, and then the other one was a serious book, and that one was a history, sort of history book, and it was tales, basically of explorers of this of the Southwest. And I kept that book forever because it was, it had a it wasn't, it was a gift. And I read the stories over and over. And I I met, I read about Madame Curie. I met Cabeza de Vaca, which was an explorer in the southwest, started in Florida, wound up living with the Indians. Such a CA, we are, I mean, so had a variety of explorers basically the southwest of the United States. And that was one of my treasured, treasured books. But I have to say we got to because we had to work. And I mentioned this to somebody that in our high school years we had to we would my sister and I and my cousin Sam Gutierrez, we would go with my grandmother, and we would work in the fruit sheds of Hemet and San Jacinto. Oh, that's a long ways, yes. And so we would go, my dad would drop us off. We'd have a tent, and we have a washed Athena, I don't know how to describe it, a metal wash bucket that we would turn upside down. And we would have drill, you know, cut a hole out, and that would become where we would have a fire for cooking. And so my grandmother was not. She was our chaperone, and she was our the person who kept the tent in order and all of that. And meanwhile, Martha and I worked in the fruit sheds, and my cousin were picking apricots, and we worked. There during the season while we were in high school, because that's what we used to pay for our school clothes and so. And so we were always and we were a family that clipped coupons, and my dad was, you know, since we got the paper every way, there were always coupons, yes. And so I laugh. I laugh because my dad would make a map, and he'd say, Okay, this is, I don't remember what day of the week. We would go most, most likely it was a Saturday, I'm not sure. But anyway, we would put the coupons, and then we would if it was two, if, if you bought two rolls of toilet paper, you got the third one free, or something like that. So we would have a he would walk in first and do the first coupon, and then I would walk in and do the second coupon, and then my sister, and that's how, you know, we made, how you stop and manage, how we manage money. And, of course, whatever we worked. And I have to say that both my sister and I were very fortunate to find part time jobs, whether we were whether we were working as babysitters, whether we were working as we worked in a variety of things. I can, I can tell you that at my part time jobs going to the school, and then college, I ran from, you know, cleaning houses to working for Fedco to working for white front to working for the telephone company. That was a really neat job. I got paid for eight hours, and I only worked six because I took the very late shift, and so my shift was over sometimes at midnight or at one o'clock in the morning, that it was a good job. I almost didn't get it. You know why I passed off my exams, but they were, at that time, they were concerned that I would wasn't tall enough to reach the high trunk, because at that time they were still using trunks, yes, and so, so I stretched myself as fast as I could and I would reached it. And so I my territory at that time was 29 palms, and the Palm Springs area. So it was, it was an interesting thing, because sometimes in the it was slow. It was usually slow. Those hours were slow. But I get these lonely Marines out there and telephone, long distance telephone number, just to have somebody to talk to. And of course, I worked as a as an inventory taker for a a technical company. And then, of course, I did some tutoring and some part time teaching that I was, you know, I was, we were very fortunate to have people who were willing to give us part time jobs and and who were willing to hire us. And of course, I have to say, we were very reliable. We had a good work ethic. We got there. We got there on time and ahead of time, sometimes and and we were very grateful for the they were not some of them were good paying jobs. I think my best job was working on campus, though, when I was at UCR working, oh yeah, because I got to know people on the campus. Got to navigate that. Got all the, you know, find out where the the this and the that, and could get my library reservations done on time and all of that. So I that was probably my best job, because we weren't always busy, and so I when we weren't busy, I could study. So I have to say that I had some marvelous teachers who introduced us to music and dance and an appreciation of culture, a lot of history. I worked in the library in when I was at Franklin junior high, which gave me access to more books, right? And so I remember we had social Do you remember, did you ever have social studies classes? The section of social studies? Yes, yes, oh yes, absolutely, yes. I don't think it exists anymore, Erin, I don't know. So

Erin Brinker: 14:20

it's it they do in the middle schools and they do in the high schools. But because they are the state testing does not include social studies. It's it is not as prioritized as English and math.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 14:34

Well, I remember Mr. Cook. He was our teach social studies teacher and I and of course, whatever the reading was at the time in the book, I got through it quickly, so I would bring my library books. And so I was reading Hemingway and Steinbeck and, wow.

Erin Brinker: 14:52

Now, what did you think of Hemingway? Hemingway is a man's man in the, you know, like the, like the archetype of a man's man. Did you enjoy? Hemingway's books.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 15:01

Yes, I actually did. I actually did, and I can't even tell you why, but he was so clear. And one of the things that I learned from Hemingway, I think, and one of my college professors told me the same thing, do not try to get flowery Gloria. That's not your style. Look at Hemingway. Short sentences, declarative get to it's true.

Erin Brinker: 15:22

That's true. Thought about it

Gloria Macias Harrison: 15:27

that way. We would read Dickens or something else, you know, where they went on and on about a vase or it's a wrinkle in the wallpaper. Come on.

Erin Brinker: 15:37

Yes, there are a lot of authors like that. You get lost in the weeds, so to speak. It's like I know the plots in there somewhere, yes.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 15:44

So I think I like the plots more than anything else. I like the plots and and so, but Steinbeck, Steinbeck, Steinbeck, got to me. I really like Steinberg. One

Erin Brinker: 15:58

of the challenges that I you know people because, I think it's because of the proliferation of devices, electronic devices. Young people aren't reading like they used to. I was very hopeful when Harry Potter came out, and there was a whole wave of young people who started picking up books again. Young people, I'm talking children and young up to young adulthood, they're picking up books again. And I don't know if that trend, I seem to believe that that trend is waned a bit. And there's there, you know, if you, if you're not literate, you can't, you don't develop the vocabulary, vocabulary that you need to be able to navigate life in its most effective way. You can't express yourself right. You can't or correctly. You can't understand what others are going through. You can't, you know, help you define where, how you fit in the world. Unless you're reading, you really miss it a lot.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 16:47

Otherwise, you get, you get mired in the slang, into the colloquialisms. And so there isn't any way. We used to, when I was teaching Spanish, we used to do an intro. It was an audio intro to languages, and we said, even if you speak one language, you are multilingual. And what we meant by that is that if you know what language to use in different situations, my grandmother used to say that a well educated person was not just book learning, it was learning how to behave in different situations and how to use vocabulary. So are you going to, are you, you know, when you're partying with your friends or family? Are you going to use the same language as if you're going to go and ask for a loan at the bank? I don't think so. No, probably not, probably not, right, unless that banker is your uncle, that's right. So in that sense, we are multilingual. We have, if you have a sense of what language to use in a different situation. And so then there was one example about the different words that that Eskimos use for snow. Snow is extremely important in their culture, right? Sure. So they must have, I don't know, maybe more than 50 or 100 words for snow, all different conditions of snow. Now, what would you think the American equivalent to that would be?

Erin Brinker: 18:17

Oh, my goodness. I

Gloria Macias Harrison: 18:23

hmm, we have a lot of words. You know what it could be. I

Erin Brinker: 18:26

was thinking rain, art, oh. I was thinking hearts,

Gloria Macias Harrison: 18:31

oh, ours. So, for instance, we have the auto. We have the word automobile, right? And we have the word auto. But then if you stand at a corner and you say, Wow, that is a great Camaro, right? Yes. Or that is what is a Camaro, right? Or that is a good Mustang. Can you imagine somebody coming to our country and trying to figure out what we're talking about? Oh, yeah, that's true. And, you know, and so we

Erin Brinker: 19:01

have muscle cars and sedans and sports cars and SUVs and, yeah, no, I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're absolutely right.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 19:11

I mean, it's so obviously cars are important to our culture, aren't they? They are. They are very important to our culture, for our transportation. And so we have all of these names for cars and so, and they come and go, depending on the year and the style and the this and the that and so. So I think if we look at language differently, I mean, we it's not just to communicate, it's it's part of our culture. It's who we are. And I always I miss the classroom, because, if nothing else, I got a chance to find out what the current slang was,

Erin Brinker: 19:49

yes, yeah. Otherwise, how would we know? Yeah?

Gloria Macias Harrison: 19:53

How would we know? Because it's not in our it's not the language that I would use at home. And I remember when my son. Came home and said something, Oh, that's sweet. And I said it, I'm thinking, What are you talking about? And the spa and the slang in Spanish, of course, is based on on the neighborhood and so, and the period of time, also the period of time. And so I remember we, we were trying to devise a Spanish class for police officers, because they need it, right? Indeed, they need it, but they don't need, they don't need to conjugate verbs. No, they don't. They don't. They need to know what the current slang is on the street at the time, right? And, of course, if you stop me, you're going to have to learn how to talk to me, and not in slang, but and in Spanish and then. But if you talk, if you if you have a younger person, you're probably going to have to use a different

Erin Brinker: 20:56

language, indeed. Well, I mean, even in different regions, so you know, how we speak here, and just using English is different than how they speak in Biloxi, Mississippi, which is different than they speak in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Chicago, Illinois. And you know, we're all in the same country, and that's and that's so true. And I when I So, I was an exchange student 100 years ago. Okay, not really 100 but it feels like it was a very long time ago. I went to Austria, and I had taken German in high school, and they teach you, you know, hello, jak, are you in the garden? I never used that. And so I got there, realized very quickly that I didn't know anything. And you learn that's right, you know, just by being around it and the reading, I had to read and and, you know, I

Gloria Macias Harrison: 21:41

and read the local newspapers, and I would always tell people, you know, listen to Spanish language radio. Listen to watch those soap operas in telenovelas. Yeah, telenovelas, you know, because you get a chance to see what is being used in the language, and then the same thing in Spanish. I mean, those of us who speak Spanish, I think of myself as bilingual and biliterate, okay, but I was in Lyon Guanajuato, which is in the central part of Mexico, to pick up my dad, who had fallen ill, and he was in a hospital. He's a US citizen, but I need to bring him back. And so I thought my Spanish was pretty good. And so we were, we were, we were, and then cultural differences, because we're very Americanized

Erin Brinker: 22:39

indeed. Well, you're American indeed. All right, we're

Gloria Macias Harrison: 22:43

very Americanized. And not only that, but as a, as a, as a Spanish author, would say we are women of carne I Hueso. We're strong women. Okay, so we had two reactions, the ER doctor, we ask questions. Of course, we ask questions. We want answers that are right. And he's not used to that. He's used to being a god. And so he said, he said, he said to us, obviously you two ladies have been smart. Those with me are used to giving orders, and so I said. And so I thought to myself, I just answered him and said, Yes, we are,

Erin Brinker: 23:29

and so and we are.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 23:32

We're used to giving orders. We're used to, you know that? I mean, we know how to behave and all of that kind of stuff, and we're not abusive or in any way shape or form. But yes, we are used to fending for ourselves in many ways. Okay, so then the the surgeons had, had been in the United States, and most of their training, and received most of their training in the United States, they loved us. We had fun. We taught, you know, they were used to women like us, right? And then we didn't think we had an accent. And the lady said, Where are you from? He says, you don't have an accent like we do. And I really didn't think I had an accent. And I saw I immediately said, because you get a different treatment if you're from the United States or you're from Mexico. I said, Oh, somos a la frontera. We're from the front border, which, which means we were, we were bilingual, so that, oh, no wonder and so. And we got two reactions from people, people who loved us and wanted to know about the United States and this and that cultural stuff. And then we had people who said to us, you think you're better than we are? Yeah,

Erin Brinker: 24:45

I'm sure there was a lot of that. You're like, No, I'm I'm here, like anybody else is here. You know? Yes, you know, so I don't

Gloria Macias Harrison: 24:53

so that was a shock to that was a sort of a shock to me, because if you live in the whole time in California, right? Right? And you have a grandmother who tells you, know, so you're living off of her experiences from the 20s and 30s, right, and 40s and and your, your, your, we're between generations almost, you know, we're baby boomers, and so the the generations that come after us, and certainly the recently arrived have a different perspective completely. And so how we communicate with each other and how we accommodate each other is interesting and and the best thing you can do is to travel. And I always said that the students who had the best knowledge of Spanish in overall, were my Mormon students who came back after a mission. Oh, yeah. Well, that makes perfect sense. Yes. I mean, they had to survive and live, you know, and do all interact and find out the culture, the language of where they were, and they were there immersed a whole year. So when they came to valley to take Spanish, because that was required, and they needed it to transfer, they were my best students. I loved, I loved talking with them,

Erin Brinker: 26:14

and the fact that they're little older and and have, yes, had, have they had to have a work ethic to survive where they were. And so I honestly think that a gap year and we can move into your your education experience as a teacher and as a college president, and you know, on the Community College Board, I'm actually a fan of a gap year, but not a gap year, just where you can sit on the couch and play video games the gap here, where you go somewhere else, away from your family, and you learn you're working on a project, you're doing something overseas or another part of the United States. Because, like I said before, Worcester, Massachusetts, has nothing to That's right, it's completely different. My story when he graduated from college, his first job was in West Virginia. We joked that that was his exchange here, because it was so different, you'd be walking very different. The culture was totally different. And, and that's good, because you grow as a person and and you learn, you gain perspective. It may not, may not change your worldview much, or it might, but you gain some perspective about, like I'm thinking, your political world worldview, if you are a progressive person, and you go to another place, it may not make you so you're not progressive anymore, but it'll it'll open your eyes to the way other people live, of what they experience and you know, and especially if you're well to do to go to an area where there might be some poverty, and you see people living and thriving and being happy and also struggling and all of that all at the same time, open your eyes to what life is really like.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 27:47

That's right, that's right. It's and even as an adult, traveling is is always a wonderful experience. An interesting thing that happens to me when I travel, is that when I travel to Europe, and even when I go to Hawaii, they think I'm Filipino.

Erin Brinker: 28:08

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, that's interesting.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 28:11

And, and so even sometimes Filipinos think I'm Filipino. So they come

Erin Brinker: 28:17

speaking to you in Tagalog, and you're like, wait a minute. No, no,

Gloria Macias Harrison: 28:21

then I have to say that standard line. Well, no, I'm not, but I have a lot of friends who are yes,

Erin Brinker: 28:27

yeah, yeah. So, well, another place that the Spanish settled and,

Gloria Macias Harrison: 28:32

and I know Martha when she went to DC, and she had really long hair at that time, and so they thought she was Native American. Oh, yeah. Interesting. Interesting, that the perspective on color changes once you leave California. It really does, yeah. And so I was in Atlanta, Georgia for a conference, and and I it was, it was such a different society there. I mean, there is a society. There is the the well to do. And it doesn't matter what color they are, they are well to do, you know. And we saw a very elegant function going on the hotel we were staying. And this was a very high end, elegant black, basically black social structure and so but, and once you leave Atlanta, it's different,

Erin Brinker: 29:33

right? But Atlanta, for for a very long time, it probably still is now a place where up and coming young professionals or or young people wanting to work into a professional career, black professionals to go and become wildly successful was always, you know, for at least a few decades, has been a place that's been a magnet for for black professionals. And you can see it. You know, people have been wildly successful, and including athletes and entertainers. Years, but also business people and finance and everything else.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 30:04

And then it was different when we went to Boston, and it was different when we went, when I spent a week in Chicago. And so I got an opportunity to see different neighborhoods, successful neighborhoods, different neighborhoods, people from the people from Poland, different. There was a Latino area. Also there was, it was just different neighborhoods and different it was so I had the opportunity, because somebody who was from Chicago to go visit different neighborhoods, and it was interesting in the hotels, because the the jobs that you would see in California, basically for Hispanics, was over there, mostly sudden, you know, people from the Ukraine, Eastern Europeans, the European and so It was a little bit different. It was say, whoa. And so I I really, I really like Chicago. I don't like it when it's windy, but I liked it very much.

Erin Brinker: 31:10

Yeah, it's a beautiful city. It it's a little rough in the winter, but it is a the skyline as far as downtown is concerned. And I'm not a big fan of cities, per se. I like, I generally like smaller cities, but Chicago is beautiful.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 31:22

Chicago is beautiful. I was only in New York for a week, and it was mostly conference, but I got the feeling of being, of being this little, tiny person in a vast sea of people. Yes,

Erin Brinker: 31:35

yeah, New York's too big for me. I'm with you like and I don't have any desire to see London or Paris, but you know, smaller towns, smaller cities. I'm all for it. Yeah, yeah. So, so tell me, how did you decide to become a teacher? When? When did How old were you when you decided that you want to be a teacher? I

Gloria Macias Harrison: 31:53

didn't decide to teach teacher. I wanted I would. Fell in love with genetics and the whole thing of in my biology class at college and and I just, I thought, that's really, actually I wanted to be a nurse somewhere along the line. And but, but that, I think was because Martha and I took care of my grandmother and her elderly years, and then so my dad, who at that time had left radio and worked at Patton State Hospital, is in Psych tech. He volunteered us all the time because there was a geriatric ward. And at Patna time, patent was very different. At that time, it was a compassionate with the idea of working with mental health in a very different way, not just data and numbers. And they had gardens across the from the from the hospital, that the patients grew their own food seriously, that was part of and that was part of their therapy and so, and they had a very small criminal, criminal mental health area, very small. So we, we would go and and he would volunteer us to either cook something or for a birthday or or do their hair or do little manicures, I mean the elderly. So I enjoyed that, I enjoyed that, I think part of the best training that I ever received for dealing with students was all the volunteer work that we did as teenagers at Patton. The patience is necessary, the routine that's necessary, all of that kind of stuff. So I thought I would be a nurse. I and then, I don't know when I changed my mind, as you know, if you as you, as you go on. But I had an opportunity when I was at and anyway, I love genetics. I love the whole thing of DNA. I love the research that. But I got the opportunity from a mutual friend of ours, Ernie Garcia. Erin. Garcia, at that time, it was the, I don't know, curriculum coordinator or something for the Rialto schools. And so one of their programs was to teach Spanish to fourth graders after school. It was purely volunteer program. So yeah, and so he picked about six of us from the community college, and I was one of them, and so I taught Spanish, and he was our trainer. So we learned to sing songs, you know, rhymes that were, you know, that were popular in English. We'd set them in Spanish. We we did, we did. Puppets. We did all kinds of things that we played games we, you know, to get language so they would use it. We're not interested in conjugating verbs or anything like that, that we wanted to have fun with the language. It was probably with one of the best things that ever happened to me. And then he also somebody else, then recommended me to teach high school Spanish one summer, and that made me decide I never wanted to teach high school.

Erin Brinker: 35:34

Yeah, teenagers, you have to have a heart for teenagers. That's, yeah, my

Gloria Macias Harrison: 35:38

husband's a middle Summer Teacher. You know, they don't want to be there. They don't, oh my god. And of course, they were all taller than I was, you know, I'm just Yeah, but we survived it, and they survived it. And I said, Never again. And so, but then I didn't want to teach elementary school either. And so when I was in grad school, position opened up, not a position, but my professors at Valley, dr, I mean, Roger Antone and Jim erinski said, you know, do you want to they? Can you teach a night class for us? And I had, didn't have my masters yet. I had my BA, a hot little Ba, ba in my hands. And so I did. And everyone in that class was older than I was. They were a lot of, you know, women returning to school, taking it after they had their regular jobs. Other people, you know, and so they I create. It was one of the best experiences of my whole life. I made friends. I made friends with these ladies who some of them, I mean, they already had a lot of courage to return to school, right, right? They had families. Some of them were single parents. So lot of brave souls, a lot of compassionate souls, and a couple of them to this day. I mean, they have now, one of them has passed away. One of them was getting her necessary credentials because she wanted to do early childhood and develop childhood credential, and she wound up teaching for the Claire cherry school. Oh, that's great, yeah. So it's a wonderful experience about, you know, teaching and, and one of them came, you know, because I was always trying to figure out how to get them involved and do this and do that. And you know, as a new teacher, you're always nervous. You want to make you want to make sure that they and I, one of them, took me aside and said, It's okay, sweetheart, we'll get through this together.

Erin Brinker: 37:53

That's awesome.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 37:56

So they took me under wing. I taught them Spanish, structural Spanish, and we had a great time. We had a great time. And so after that, once I had my MA, I was offered a position and and the other thing that came up is that all this time I'm working right, I'm going to school, I'm working. And I thought to myself, in order to get to be where I would like to be as a geneticist and all that. It's going to take a lot of schooling, right? I don't have the money for it. I don't have the money for it, and I enjoy this. Maybe that's because I'm a Gemini and I, I, I enjoy a lot of stuff, right? That's a good thing. Yeah, it's a good thing. So that's how I started, and it's been an interesting it was an interesting time. And and then my boss at the time was Roger anthem, but then later on, my boss was Judith bias, oh, because she was teaching. And, yeah, very nice teaching. And so. And then she went on to be a Vice President of Instruction at Valley and and I went on to and so she sort of recommended me for a leadership training program through the for through the, I think it was the Ford Foundation and so. And my president at the time was Don singer, and so he said they had to agree to let me go for weeks, different, different one week periods throughout the year. And so I went to Miami, Dade in Florida, which is one of the premier community colleges, and learned what they were doing, what they were experimenting with. I went to San Diego, and that was mostly finance, with the the whole idea of the of the program was to interest Latinos in going into administration. Yeah. Yeah, because I was perfectly happy in my classroom. Don't get me wrong, perfectly happy in my classroom, lot of independence, and so, but at the same time, so Judith was the one that recommended me, and so she said, you know, she's sort of pushing me out of the nest. And so after that experience, and then we were in Colorado for a week, and we met with other Latino presidents from all over the United States, and I found out at community colleges, and most of them, I mean, it's very different. The community college system in Texas is very different from the California system. Some of them are associated and especially in the East Coast, they're associated with universities. Oh, I didn't know that. And, yeah, some and the way they're funded is very different. So that's why I was in Chicago, by the way, to see the community colleges there. But anyway, it was, it was a tremendous experience, and I went ahead and applied for an evening Dean position. I didn't get it. I was, however, the the screening committee encouraged me, even though I didn't get that position for me to keep trying, because they liked me, and so it's the best thing that happened to me, because I didn't get it, because my husband felt so sorry for me, he bought me a sports car.

Erin Brinker: 41:21

Wow, that's awesome.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 41:24

One of my passions are sports cards. I have to give them up, but that's okay. That's okay. I did have several for a while, but anyway, the the position was eliminated about a year later. So it worked out well, that I worked out. Well, yeah. And so I tell people, you know, if you don't succeed at first, you just, you know, figure out, what did I learn from this? What did I learn from this? And I remember my daughter once had a had a semi bad experience. She thought it was a bad experience, and she said, Okay, Mom, what was I supposed to learn from this?

Erin Brinker: 42:03

I may not know right now, but it'll be apparent eventually.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 42:07

So, I mean, so you always have to figure out, what did you learn from this? What did you What did you experience from this, and how? What did you learn about yourself? Were you well prepared for it, you know? And then I tried for a dean position, and then I tried for a vice president position. Didn't get it at Valley, and that's okay. It worked out fine, but and then I was a, I was a humanity Dean of Humanities, and it was always I was also department chair for a while too. So I learned to scheduling, you know, listening to adjunct listening to regular faculty, trying to get a schedule that was appropriate for the students we had, and all of that kind of stuff, and then dealing with the bureaucracy of of administration. And so because it's a different animal, it's a different animal, and you're no longer and it's interesting, because I think the hardest thing to get over is that you're no longer in the classroom, and so all of your experience in the classroom is different when you become an administrator and and then people that fellow faculty, your colleagues, look at you differently, and especially when you have to make a tough decision, and the faculty says, I thought she was one of us,

Erin Brinker: 43:37

exactly yes, yes. And the reality is, is that, no, I just have access to different information that impacted my opinion. That's right. In addition to what you've your position is there are other people, and I had to take it all into consideration. People don't think of that

Gloria Macias Harrison: 43:51

yes, other than that classroom, right? Yes. So, so anyway, I was, I was recruited by faculty and and the middle managers from Crafton. Crafton was going through a tough time at the time, and so and so they recruited me in the sense of, think about it. They had a VP of Instruction opener, and I said, I don't know. I don't know if I want to, you know, I'm very comfortable here all of that. So I did apply. There were 19 people in my screening committee. Oh, wow. And so the experience that I'd had through the Ford Foundation and other mentors, you have to think about, okay, and it applies to anything you're applying for something. Did you do your research? Did you find out what the job really is? Did you talk to people who who have also had that job in the past? What are the typical questions that you think are going to be asked of you if you're not prepared for that? You know, prepare yourself. Prepare yourself. Do your research. Church, right? Read about, you know, read about the campus, read about, you know, the people who have been there before, whatever. Anyway, I did get the position, had a great time. And one of the things that I noticed because I had been a student at Valley, and some of my colleagues were my former teachers, Oh, wow. So they tend to, even though you're now a teacher, also, they tend to look at you still as a student, right, right? And so when I went to craft and all of that disappeared, I was, you're only

Erin Brinker: 45:31

the professional, yeah, you weren't a student, yeah, yeah.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 45:35

And so it was, it was a great 12 years. I enjoyed my years, and we did a lot of it was also the start of participatory governance. That means more faculty voice in the governance, not decision making, but the voice of input, right? So we did a lot of things together. It was the beginning of that, developing that, and I had a lot of support. I made sure that I because in any, any campus, there are, there are, how do you put it? Different groupings of people, click, right, okay,

Erin Brinker: 46:19

say that, okay. But, but there are, if they're humans, a human happens people and

Gloria Macias Harrison: 46:24

so sort themselves very hard at making sure that I was seen with all of them in some way or another. That's good, because you don't want to be associated with one particular one. No, otherwise they don't have the freedom or the trust you have to develop trust, right, that you're going to listen and that you're going to get input and and that you're going to make a decision, even if they disagree with it, that was based on input, right? Because ultimately, they're not, they're not the Vice President of Instruction, they're not the president of the campus. They have a different function, and we all, if we can all work together as a team, then then we work, we can have a successful campus and a successful experience for those students, those students, when they step on their campus, they have to be office, services and education, and they don't need to be admired in the politics of the campus. That's not,

Erin Brinker: 47:23

that's not what we're there. Yeah. So we don't have a whole lot of time left. I want to ask you one quick question, and I'd love to have you back on to continue to come back on again and talk about educational issues in the in the region. I'm curious what you think about I'm of the opinion that every student at from kindergarten on, should be learning English and Spanish, that everything should be dual immersion all the way through. And I use the example of Canada, where they everything's in English and French. If they can do it, why can't we do English and Spanish? Spanish is the number two language spoken in the United States, and certainly in the southern states, you know, from Texas all the way through to Florida, you hear Spanish everywhere, and I'm of the opinion that that everybody should be learning it from the very youngest ages when the brain is best able to learn languages. What is your opinion?

Gloria Macias Harrison: 48:20

You're asking a bilingual person who learned from home and then cleaned up her Spanish through education. I believe every person needs to learn another language, and they did away with the requirement that the universities had, that everyone would had to have two semesters of a foreign language and Spanish. Yeah, Spanish would have been, you know, great, but I took French because I didn't need the Spanish, right, right? I took French. And even though my French is, is God awful when I travel, I'm more biliterate than I am bilingual, and I certainly love French literature, so it gave me a different appreciation of the people and where I fit in as a visitor, as somebody who might live there or whatever. But in the southwest, I think it's absolutely essential. And the only thing that I concerned about is that there what is considered dual immersion in one district may not be the same in another district. Oh, fair enough. That's true. Okay, and so I, I see some programs that are the children are enthusiastic that, you know, they want to learn this, and they learn stuff, and and is, and so it, it has to be more than that, and but, and I'm not. But I don't know enough about the dual immersion program, right?

Erin Brinker: 50:04

And I don't know there doesn't really generalities,

Gloria Macias Harrison: 50:07

yeah. So I know that in the elementary school it works beautifully, but I don't know if we have the trained staff to do it by the time you get to middle school or the time you get to high school, I don't know.

Erin Brinker: 50:24

So that is a fair answer. And in all fairness, I completely sprung this on you. Did not prep for that question at all.

Gloria Macias Harrison: 50:29

I just No, no, no, no. I It's because sometimes I see a program that's absolutely marvelous. And then even with the after school Spanish that we did with the fourth graders, you know, they remember phrases and stuff like my own device. Hurry, hurry. You know, the and and the phrases that we even to this day, when I say to my husband, let's get going. I said, I don't know. I don't know. And that was from high school, Spanish for Mr. Balloon way back. Let's get going. You know, that's awesome, but it's not enough. It's not enough. It's not enough. There has to be the literature. There has to be there has to be some cultural parts of it too. And it's just like when I when I listen to my Chicano friends, and they want Chicano culture, and I'm thinking, Mijito, there is so much of the world that speaks Spanish. When I was in Spain, in Barcelona, right? Barcelona, it's a good thing that Mrs. Mercado and Mrs. Rivera in high school took us to see flamenco, took us to see classical guitar, took us to, you know, to all of these things, and exposed us to Spanish live, not just Latin American literature, because the language is is the literature that is available to us is fantastic. It's fantastic. So I again, it depends on the quality of the program, and it depends on whether there's a follow up, because you get all these kids excited and everything in an elementary school, and I think there is a program in San Bernardino district that goes all the way to high school? Yes, I would be interested to see the data on that. How many went on to college? How many are successful in college? How many went on to do something else? What? It's too new. I think no one's done the research. Yet. No one's done the research. What did do you think you were well prepared? That does? Did this allow you to do such and such? And then one of the things that I did did a little bit of translating for a while, not much. I'm not good at it. And the reason I'm not good at it is that I was formally trained, right? And then my Spanish, and colloquial Spanish is from my grandmother several generations ago, right? Yes, and and whatever, because I'm not on the streets, right? And not on the streets, I don't know. So I was trying to translate for this man who said he wanted to say it was his common law wife, and he said la mujer cameos. He said, What the heck does that mean? I literally translate that. It basically says the woman who acknowledges me. Oh, yeah, that's a little translation. Oh, and what he meant was his and that, but that's what he said, right? So I, I thought to myself, I'm not going to do this, because I'm it's not fair to the person I'm translating for, right? And so

Erin Brinker: 53:57

things get lost in translation. That's an example of why

Gloria Macias Harrison: 54:00

that's an example. Why? That's an example, why? So this has

Erin Brinker: 54:05

been delightful, and I could talk to you all afternoon, all day,

Gloria Macias Harrison: 54:10

I stopped to do Erin

Erin Brinker: 54:12

well, and we're time my show, my show is only an hour. So this has been really, really wonderful. I'm so grateful for this time with you, and I hope that you would come back. And,

Gloria Macias Harrison: 54:24

oh, I love to come back. Wonderful. Well, Gloria Macias Harris it makes me feel very comfortable.

Erin Brinker: 54:28

Oh, good. I'm so glad. I'm so and your stories are just, I mean, I just want more. I want to hear more about your life and more about what you're doing. And we will, we will, I will definitely have you back on the show. Gloria Macias Harrison, thank you for your commitment to community. Thank you for your commitment. For your commitment to education and for all

Gloria Macias Harrison: 54:45

that you have done for us and to you. Erin, thank you. You and Tobin, thank you. Thank you. But

Erin Brinker: 54:50

that is about all we have time for today. I'm Erin Brinker, you've been listening to the making hope happen radio show. For more information about the making hope happen Foundation, go to WWE. WW, dot, making hope. Dot, O, R, G, that's w, w, w, dot, making hope.org. Have a great week, everybody, and I'll talk to you next week.

Noraly Sainz: 55:09

Hi. My name is Noraly Sainz, and I am Program Coordinator at uplift San Bernardino, a collective impact initiative at the making hope happen Foundation. And this is my story in November of 2017 my husband, our four young sons and I moved away from our families to San Bernardino with the hope of reaching our goal of home ownership in 2018 as our oldest son started kindergarten, I connected with the school district and learned about making hope happens. Kids program with my oldest in kindergarten and my twins at preschool, I had the opportunity to tote my youngest to the kids parenting classes. In January of 2020, my husband and our family's breadwinner unexpectedly passed away. I found myself in a pandemic with my sons in an uncertain future. It was then that that oasis that I found at kids turned into my support system as the staff and friends rallied around me while my sons and I struggled to find our new normal. In October of 2020, after seven years as a homemaker, I joined the making hope happen foundation as a program coordinator for uplift San Bernardino. This career opportunity reignited my family's dream of home ownership in November of 2022 through the mutual support of the uplift San Bernardino Housing Network, my family was able to buy our first home in my role as program coordinator, and as I connect with other families in our community, I can wholeheartedly attest to the opportunities that the foundation is bringing to our community and truly making hope happen.

Erin Brinker: 56:40

For more information about the making hope happen foundation and to make a donation, please visit www.makinghope.org that's WWW dot makinghope. Dot O, R, G, your donations make our work possible.

PSA: 56:56

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Unknown: 58:24

produced at us, taxpayer expense. The.